Power and Passion Reviewed By Karen Dahood of Bookpleasures.com

Karen Dahood

Reviewer Karen Dahood :
Karen lives in Tucson, AZ. After 35 years as a writer for businesses
and nonprofits, she has turned to writing mysteries,the subtext of
which addresses ageism, unpreparedness for aging, and America's
wealth of experience and wisdom. Learn more about eldersleuth Sophie
George at the Website Moxie
Cosmos; Making Sense of Life Through Writing.

The
title describes what it takes to raise a quarter million dollars for
charity. This is one good reason to have this novel on your
bookshelf. Another is that it presents Dubai in a very different
light from what other writers have depicted of this Persian Gulf boom
town in the United Arab Emirates.

To
change our minds about the flamboyant city of less than two million
-- 70% men and 75% expats -- seems to be the purpose of this author.
Kay Tejani, an educator, recognizes that it is over-the-top
(literally) architecture that sticks in most readers’ minds when we
think about Dubai. It has the tallest skyscraper in the world at the
moment, and no doubt will build one taller if there is a challenger.
Last year an architecture critic suggested Dubai’s leaders exhibit
bad taste, and that their construction triumphs are undercut by
infrastructure that is primitive. You’ll get a very different
portrait here.

The
novel’s heroine works and lives in a Dubai amongst new office and
apartment towers and world-class hotels that are gorgeously
appointed, but not too flashy. They express the very best in the
local cultures. Her mostly Muslim community is a mix of nationalities
in a variety of traditional and contemporary costumes, attractive,
ultra-polite, thoughtful of staff. (Real-life Dubai has the second
most expensive hotels in the world and has been cited for inhumane
labor practices.)

I
had just come out of a fictional world of very sophisticated English
adults who had been “Raj orphans” in the 1940s, i.e., born to
ex-pats in India and sent off to boarding schools, so my first
impression of POWER AND PASSION was that, though well written, it
seemed awfully “goody-two-shoes.” Sara Sharif works as an events
planner for Special Olympics and her friends are philanthropists or
well-connected people willing to give others a hand. The plot
revolves around Sara’s challenge to bring attention as well as
funds to the SO organization, not so well known in Middle East. Her
crisis is a sudden loss of the sponsor. Momentum comes from the
timeline it takes to conceive and plan a gala and then make it
happen. The characters grow, most notably in a trio of women who
establish that there is nothing more rewarding in life than helping
others.

Tejani
supplies much fascinating detail, such as the news that camel milk
chocolate is the best there is and highest in nutrients. We learn
that Middle Eastern women who are educated and ambitious still worry
about having to handle two-thirds of the housework. In one chapter,
young couples are taken on a safari to glistening sand dunes where
they are seated on carpets under white tents to enjoy wonderful
Arabian food and entertainment, including sand-skiing – which
almost tops that most famous Dubai activity, taking to the five ski
slopes maintained inside a mall. (Look it up. You can have “penguin
encounters, and winter clothes are handed out with the price of
admission.) Tejani provides insights to local flower-arranging,
family evenings in an apartment tower, high-pressure office culture,
5-star hotel breakfast pastries. We learn the protocols of charity
work. And romance.

Most
interesting to me was the polite yet sincere “small talk’ that
precedes serious networking, apparently typical among these people
who are dealing with a rapidly evolving society, one that has seen
plenty of ups and downs since oil became a commodity in the 1960s.
Tourism is flourishing, as one might imagine, and yet business is
still conducted with a high degree of formality.

This
is a novel hard to peg, but I think Tejani is quite convincing in
making her point that people making money from development are not
all greedy, and that there has to be more than night after night of
lavish banquets in luxurious surroundings to make our lives
worthwhile.